Instructions

ZOOM IN by clicking on the page. A slider will appear, allowing you to adjust your zoom level. Return to the original size by clicking on the page again.

MOVE the page around when zoomed in by dragging it.

ADJUST the zoom using the slider on the top right.

ZOOM OUT by clicking on the zoomed-in page.

SEARCH by entering text in the search field and click on "In This Issue" or "All Issues" to search the current issue or the archive of back issues
respectively.
.

PRINT by clicking on thumbnails to select pages, and then press the
print button.

SHARE this publication and page.

ROTATE PAGE allows you to turn pages 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise.Click on the page to return to the original orientation. To zoom in on a rotated page, return the page to its original orientation, zoom in, and
then rotate it again.

CONTENTS displays a table of sections with thumbnails and descriptions.

ALL PAGES displays thumbnails of every page in the issue. Click on
a page to jump.

thirst Hurley Vineyard Estate Balnarring Mornington Peninsula Pinot Noir 2006 $40 14.8% alcohol Diam cork 92++ A sinuous, of black cherries, fennel, musk, complex mess beetroot, cedar, old nutmeg, confectioner’s sugar, anise and whatever you’ve got the time to wait for, this is a powerful, alcoholic, engaging pinot from one of the southern hemisphere’s best pinot sites. And it’s not a mess, really. It’s quite neat and tidy. But it’s not behaving yet; it’s not trained. It lashes restlessly about the mouth like a sinuous beast, leaving a light coating of black tea tannin and a long, acidulous astringency. It’s big, but balanced, long, intense and strapping. Plenty of decanter, big glasses, boeuf bourguignon. www.hurleyvineyard.com.au Chateau Tanunda Barossa Tower Moscato 2008 $15 8% alcohol Screw cap 91 Some bonk nailed me in The Ex last week and demanded to know how I could possibly point “a bloody moscato higher than most of the bloody cabernet in the bloody country”. Easy. It’s in this glass right now: the perfect thing to separate ice blocks in a huge cognac balloon while it’s 44C outside. Roses, nashi pear, honeydew. Not too sweet, not too fi zzy,not too dim and simple, lovely acidity, and another bottle in the freezer. Chug-a-lug! Creme fraiche, walnuts and thin sliced habaneros on cracked pepper Vita-Weat biscuits. Perfect hair of the dog stuff, too. www.chateautanunda.com Hollick Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2005 $24 14.5% alcohol Screw cap 92+++ Merlot has given this blend its rich lignin and bitumen complexity, adding to the tomato leaf methoxypyrazine of the fi ne Coonawarra cab, which is the Hollick family’s specialty. It’s more phenolics and lignins than outright fruits at this stage, which is not to say there aren’t black cherries and blackcurrants stewing away there beneath the chalky tannins, which are also in suffi cient abundance to promise at least 10 years’ rewarding dungeon. It must be annoying to the Hollicks that they know this will last beautifully, but few regard a wine so inexpensive as a great cellaring prospect. www.hollick.com ruce Kemp, Southcorp boss from 1992 to ’99 and more recently international wine consultant and chairman of Pipers Brook winery in Tasmania, was last week appointed president of the Winemakers Federation of Australia. “I am honoured to be invited bythe WFA to take on this critical leadership role at a time of great challenge for the Australian wine industry,” Kemp understated. “The industry’s oversupply, policy risks associated with growing community and government concerns about binge drinking, and better integration of our key industry bodies will be priorities during my term.” A week earlier, the Bureau of Meteorology announced on Radio National that we should expect the heatwave just starting to be hotter and longer than the brute which blitzed us last year. Scarily, it was also a lot earlier, so there will most likely be more heat coming. Within days, it was obvious the vintage was crook. From Griffith to Port Lincoln, leaves curled, yellowed and died, leaving grapes which had already been toasted exposed and raisining. After a week of that, you’d think the new WFA boss might have taken his inaugural opportunity to discuss the matter of his wine lake evaporating faster than Lake Albert. But some may argue that binge drinking is exactly what you need when you’ve got a wine lake; or that the opportunity was there to say “drought puts end to wine binge drinking”, as most diehard plonkies binge on the bladder-pack alley juice that makes up half Australia’s wine and which is generally fi rst to go in a heatwave in a drought. It doesn’t necessarily disappear, but works its way up into more expensive bottled brands. While the hole in the goonbag quickly fi lls with plonk from Chile, South Africa or Argentina, the new president didn’t warn of “new fears over import plonk fl ood”. It is the duty of such bodies to ensure the drinking rate is maintained, and a man in Mr Kemp’s role at Global Wine Advice would be fully aware of the opportunities such an import boom provides. Which brings me to another critical issue; one that has become all the more obvious and The heatwave has meant an early vintage at d’Arenberg in McLaren Vale. acute since I wrote my preliminary vintage report last week. This is the tortured way in which the wine industry reports day-to-day matters in awful times like these. After last week’s vintage piece, my phone and e-mail filled with complaints: some soft, some bitter, some straight-out nasty. “It’s far too early to call,” they said. “It’s not that bad... our chardy looks schmick! We are not like grain growers... people will stop buying wine.” And so on. I have two responses to this. First, Adelaide is the most wine-savvy marketplace on Earth. Everybody in this big village knows a grape grower, a winemaker, a cellar sales worker, a vineyard worker, a liquor storeman, a wine rep. They’re in every family. These people quickly know when a vintage is crook, because they see their livelihood threatened, and they talk about it. So when some official gets up and says, “It’s too early to say – there’ll be some really good wines made this year,” everybody in this town hopes that’s true but knows it’s not quite. Everybody feels the heat! I was unduly hopeful last year in the matter of Clare riesling that was picked before the heatwave. In tank, and later in bottle, the wines looked mercifully good. But now,many that were fi ne are beginning to show the truth: they’re honeying and ageing before their time. They’re lovely drinks, but not whatwe thought. This is the result of years of drought stress, not sudden heatwave. I should have been more faithful to my gut feeling, and not so eagerly predicting great cellaring futures for those wines. My other response concerns the industry’s planning. If the weather doctors are right about us having to expect less water, but more heat, longer heat, earlier heat and more incessant heat for a century or so, we should be expecting the wine industry as we know it to be closing down in fi ve or six years. A good pile of the cash Kevin’s helicopter is about to drop on Australia should be spent on fast-tracking the grape research station promised for Glenthorne Farm, so drought- resistant varieties never tried in Australia can be rushed through quarantine, tested and distributed. The University of Adelaide pledged by deed to do this in 2001, but now plans instead to plant 1000 houses and pick up a quick $100 million. If the wine industry persists with the varieties it now pursues, the rural schools with the nice, new, fully insulated meeting halls Kevin is shouting us may well be shut before the halls are finished. Communities will continue to evaporate. The university is a school, isn’t it? Since his role as chief executive of Southcorp Wines, Bruce Kemp has been busy in his Global Wine Advice consultancy, and has been chairman of Pipers Brook Vineyards and Anthony Smith & Associates, a manufacturer of synthetic wine stoppers. And he talks about a business oversupply? Will somebody please tell him what’s just happened to the 2009 vintage? One of his notable statements came in 2001, when Fosters Berringer was about to move on Southcorp,which he’d just left. “I think what we’re seeing is some consolidation within the industry as major ROSE TOURIGA 2006 Philip White - 93 points THE RED WINE DRINKERS ROSE The subtle fruit with fine tannins and dry fi nish is in the mediterranean style of rose SPECIAL $11.99 ea. or $10.99 ea by doz Available at these selected fi ne wine stores: • Melbourne St Cellars • Edinburgh Cellars • Goodwood Cellars • Avoca Hotel Bottle Shop • Cellarbrations Fullarton companies try and increase their size and scale to ensure that they are going to be able to movewhat is going to be significantly increasing volumes of wine into the international market,” he said. The BMW motorcycle addict (that’s a tick!) has had eight years to learn that you can’t continue to move significantly increasing volumes of wine into the international market. As Fosters is beginning to discover. But one would have thought that the blitz of heat destroying much of Australia’s premium crop right now might have earned a mention in the new president’s fi rst major statement. No? Or the little matter of the death of the river? Or the phylloxera? Or the consideration of the sudden disappearance of all the money in the world? The Winemakers Photo: Kate Elmes Federation grewout of the Small Winemakers Federation, a group initiated in the mid-1980s by the late GregTrott of Wirra Wirra, which formed because the big industry councils consistently failed to protect the interests of the small winemakers and growers. At its seminal meeting in McLaren Vale, guest chairman Brian Croser suggested the proposed members’ size limit of 400 tonnes crush was far too small for such a group to have any punch, and immediately insisted that wineries the size of Yalumba should be included. There went the Small Winemakers Federation. It will be interesting to see precisely what “better integration of our key industry bodies” involves. But it’s not likely such a sensible promise will be kept when the Winemakers Federation’s still thinks we’re oversupplied. ?For a slideshow of photos showing the impact of the heat on SA grapes, visit www.independentweekly.com.au February 13 - 19, 2009 The Independent Weekly 35 www.independentweekly.com.au Philip White http://drinkster.blogspot.com/ The heat is onB